If you’re looking to enhance your communication effectiveness by 20 to 30 per cent in any type of presentation—from lecture hall to conference hall, sales meeting to boardroom presentation—the research is absolutely clear.

Get rid of cluttered slides. In fact, you may be better off to get rid of your slides altogether.

Research clearly shows that you can enhance your communication outcomes by keeping your laptop open, turning off the projector, and delivering the same information to the audience without showing a single slide. If necessary, use a whiteboard, a flip chart, or the whiteboard app on your tablet to highlight certain points and draw diagrams.

But don’t show a single slide. Not one. And, believe it or not, three separate research studies provide strong evidence that your communication effectiveness will be enhanced by 20 to 30 per cent.

Purdue UniversityResearchers at Purdue University conducted their study as part of a course entitled “Human Factors in Engineering” that was delivered to students from four majors—engineering, humanities, management and technology. The course was attended by both undergraduate and graduate students and was taught three times a week for 16 weeks.

There were two separate streams of classes for the course and, for two lectures (one to each stream), two distinctly different delivery styles were used to deliver exactly the same information—one with PowerPoint and one without.

Researchers then applied a 20-question quiz to test students’ ability to recall information in four categories.

Students who weren’t exposed to PowerPoint scored 29 per cent higher on the quiz in recalling oral information, and achieved higher overall scores with the recall of all information.

Universitat Autònoma de BarcelonaResearchers at Barcelona conducted their study with 205 students registered in a course entitled “The Psychology of Education”—a compulsory course for those working toward a bachelor’s degree in psychology.

The course was divided into four groups and led by two professors. Each professor taught two streams one day of the week, lecturing once in the morning and once in the afternoon.

The professors worked together to develop a 19-slide PowerPoint presentation for the class in which slides would be shown. The number of lines in each slide did not exceed 13. The number of words per slide varied between 42 and 93.

They flipped a coin to determine who would deliver PowerPoint in the morning and who would deliver it in the afternoon.

The professors administered a 10-question multiple-choice test immediately after each presentation, which was based on information taught during the class.

The students who weren’t exposed to PowerPoint scored 22 per cent higher on the quiz than those who were.

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität MünchenA study conducted at Ludwig Maximilians University Munich has confirmed that the audience misses large portions of what is said when slides are shown while a presenter is talking.

Researchers labelled the phenomenon “the speech suppression effect” of slides. When subjects were tested on identical information presented with slides and without, “the retention of oral information was significantly lower in the condition with regular slides than in the condition without slides.”

The researchers also asked: “Will a loss in oral information lead to a gain elsewhere in the presentation process when slides are shown?”

Their answer? No.

“It is remarkable, however, that this ‘suppressive’ effect of regular slides,” they wrote, “could not be demonstrated to be the downside of a trade-off in favour of the retention of information on slides.”

He conducted his first media relations campaign (and coached his first spokespeople) during the summer of 1981 while promoting two student theatre arts productions, Pal Joey and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.

He has bee self-employed since 1985. For the past 25 years, media training has been his core business.

His media training program, At Ease With the Media, has provided thousands of spokespeople from five continents with the tools needed to manage exchanges with journalists to win-win outcomes, while protecting themselves and their organization every step of the way.

Eric holds a bachelor's degree communication studies from Athabasca University and a two-year diploma in advertising and public relations from Grant MacEwan College.

He is an accredited business communicator (ABC), an accredited public relations practitioner (APR), and a master communicator (MC)—which is the highest distinction that can be bestowed upon a Canadian member of the International Association of Business Communicators. In 2014, he was named a member of the College of Fellows of the Canadian Public Relations Society (FCPRS).

If you're interested in learning about how his proven approach can help your spokespeople, please explore this website or contact Eric directly.